


Adze-on-Block

by ExpatGirl



Series: Episode Codas: Hieroglyphs [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s11e10 The Devil in the Details, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Not Beta Read, Not Happy, Possession, Post-Episode: s11e10 The Devil in the Details, Suicidal Thoughts, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“This could be a good thing,” Lucifer said.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adze-on-Block

**Author's Note:**

> Adze-on-block, or 'adze working on a block of wood' is an [ancient Egyptian hieroglyph](https://www.anony.ws/i/2016/01/26/adzeonblock.png).

“Does Cas seem...off, to you?” Sam asked cautiously, as they unloaded groceries from the back seat. It had been four days since they’d escaped Lucifer by the skin of their teeth, and both of them were still rattled.

Dean shifted slightly to regain his balance. Six bags at once was probably too many, but he would rather schlep it all than make two trips. “Define _off_ ,” he said, grabbing another bag.

“I dunno,” Sam said. He shut the door with a thud. “Not quite himself. You know. Off.”

“Sam, the guy’s been 31 flavors of off for about six years. I... _damn it_.” The handles of one of the bags broke, spilling boxes of frozen pizza onto the ground.

“Yeah, Dean, I get that,” Sam said, stooping to help him. “Give me one of the those bags, for god’s sake.” Dean did, scowling. “I don’t mean, uh, normal-off,” Sam said. “I mean _off_ -off.”

“He’s been through a lot, okay,” Dean said, standing. “He’s allowed to be a little weird. In fact, I’d be kinda worried if he _wasn’t_ a little weird.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“He said it himself: he’ll be fine. We’ve just got to, I dunno, let him take it at his own pace, or whatever it is those self-help books say.”

They let the matter go.

****

If asked, later, Dean would say he knew something was up from the minute Cas turned down the offer of a post-cagematch ride. Sam would say it was when he caught Cas watching him a few days later in the bunker, with an intensity he’d only ever aimed at Dean--though at the time, Sam thought he’d hallucinated it; Castiel’s eyes were always elsewhere when Sam turned to look at him fully. Or maybe it was some time between, when Cas, who usually drove as though a 6.6 liter engine should be able to move a five-ton car at the speed of thought, came inching and hiccuping up the drive as though he’d never touched a steering wheel before.

Or maybe, it was the fact that he’d lingered at the entrance of the bunker until Dean had turned and said: “Well, don’t just stand there, you’ll let all the heat out. Come inside.”

He’d smiled faintly and said: “Oh, of course, sorry. I...wasn’t thinking,” and followed so closely on Dean’s heels that Dean was tempted to make a joke about hair-pulling, before he thought the better of it.

“Want me to give that thing a tune up?” Dean asked instead.

“What?”

“Your car. Looks like Metatron’s been letting it go to the dogs. And you’re gonna get rust under the paint by the left taillight if you’re not careful.”

“Uh, sure, I guess.”

“You...guess?” Dean asked, pausing for a fraction of a moment at the bottom of the stairs, and only moving again when it became clear that Cas was going to run right into him.

“I mean, of course, Dean. That...would be very kind of you. Thanks.”

Dean spared a quick glance over his shoulder, and Cas was smiling at him warmly. “I’ll uh...give it a detail , too. If you want. Or I can show you how to do it. I mean, it takes time but it can be, uh,” he cleared his throat, “therapeutic.”

“Great,” Cas said. “Let’s do that.”

“Okay, yeah,” Dean said, rolling his shoulders to try and work out the nerve-constricting tension that seemed to be building there. Odd. He didn’t usually get headaches that started in his neck. “I know how much you like that boat.”

“Absolutely,” Cas said, slipping out of his coat. “It’s...truly a feat of human engineering.”

The way Cas emphasized the words made the feeling at the back of Dean’s neck throb, but when Dean looked at him again, Cas was simply watching him intently.

So far, so normal.

****

The truth was, it was Rowena, or rather, Rowena’s ghost that served as the canary in this particular coal mine. She came to Sam the sixth night, her neck a twisted ivory column, and she looked at him—literally—over her shoulder.

“This is a dream,” Sam said, as he landed in a blood-soaked hotel bed and watched her contort her arm to drink tea from the wrong angle.

“No prizes given,” she said tartly. “But I do have something to tell you.”

“How are you even here?” Sam asked, clawing his way out of the sodden brocade bedding. “This place is warded. I’m...I’m hallucinating, aren’t I?”

She set her teacup down. “You opened the lines of communication to Hell, bonny lad. I was part of that. And you never fully shut those lines down.”

“What are you talking about? You closed the Cage. I said no, you closed the Cage, we left. Line shut.”

She sighed. “And yet, here we are, Samuel.”

“No. No. This is some kind of weird, post-Hell trip. I’m not listening.” He reached for the door handle, and it melted with a shriek in his palm.

“Oh, for pity's sake, do I have to carve it into your brother?” She moved towards him in an awkward, off kilter way, before her movements smoothed out into one long sinuous slide. The gold-white glitter of her dress turned black as she slid towards him. He stepped away warily, but she stopped a few paces in front of him.

“What happened to your neck?” Sam asked, flattening against the door. The carpet gave oddly under his feet. He looked down, and saw that the floor was seeping blood in every footstep.

“Ah. That. It seems that, yet again, I have terrible taste in men. Or...not men. Angels.”

“What?”

“Be glad you’re not a woman, Sam. We tend to die once we become inconvenient.” The fire in the fireplace hissed green-blue and gave off the stench of burning metal. She cleared her throat, incongruously prim, and the fire regained its merry crackle. “This crime against nature,” she said, gesturing to her mangled neck, “is the work of Lucifer, formerly of Heaven, late of the pits of Hell, and currently of the bedroom next to your brother’s.”

“No.”

“Um, _yes_ ,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m sad to say it, but that pet angel of yours belongs to someone else now.”

“You’re lying,” Sam said, pointing at her grotesquely calm face, with its unmarred eye shadow and deathly pallor. “You’re trying to get me to turn on Cas, and it won’t work.”

“Very well,” she said, smiling. She walked back over to the ornate end table where she’d laid her cup. She grimaced as she took a sip, and her neck gave an odd crunch as she swallowed. “Oh bother, it’s gone cold.” She looked up at him. “Summon my son. Don’t ring him. Summon. You know he has no choice but to answer a summons. Unless, of course,” she threw the teacup into the fire, where it exploded, “he’s being held prisoner by someone much bigger and stronger than him.” She smiled brightly. “And Sam, remember this: I’m the only one that can open or close that door. Now go, see if I’m right.”

****

Crowley didn’t answer the summons. Or the next. Or the next.

****

“This could be a good thing,” Lucifer said. "Think about it." The wrongnesses of the last few days accumulated and fell on Dean all at once, like a blizzard that had built up when he was watching individual snowflakes. He balked, squeamish at the intimacy of the gentle expression Lucifer wore. He couldn’t move away, despite every instinct in him wailing for him to _punch it and put a knife in it, Dean_. He’d felt that way, once, looking at Castiel. But now it was wrong, to want to flee from those familiar eyes, that face.

But those eyes, that face: they were just the wrapper, the thin veneer that allowed the fathomless thing underneath to move through the flesh-and-blood world. And the fathomless thing looking out at him now was the wrong one, the wrong iteration of infinity, a fractured mirror reflecting back the wrong sun. He thought he might be sick.  
Somewhere behind them, Sam groaned and tried to get to his feet, but Lucifer flicked his wrist and sent him flying again. Another shelf of bottles and boxes crashed to the ground.

“ _Nothing_ you do is a good thing, you bastard.” He tried to move away, but was rooted to the spot.

“Is that so? Including the part where I locked up the Darkness in the first place so this lousy little planet could exist? _You’re welcome_ , by the way.” He sighed. “I mean you, of all people, Dean, should understand what that entailed. We’re part of a very select club, you and I.” Lucifer grinned at him, a spear of light breaking through a cloud, and Dean felt ice water in his veins. “We should have a secret handshake or something.” He looked at Dean for a moment, the artful flamboyance stripped away to perfect, unearthly stillness.“They called me righteous once, too.”

“Listen, you son of a bitch, I don’t know how you managed to trick Cas, but…”

Lucifer blinked. “ _Trick_ him? Please. You have me confused with that other archangel. I’m not the tricking kind, Dean. I never have been. I may bend the truth a little, I may bring my own unique perspective to it, but _I don’t trick people_.” The air grew sharp and brittle around them. “And like I said: This could be a good thing.” He looked at Dean earnestly as he said it, the right blue in the wrong eyes, and laid a hand Dean’s shoulder. The wrong shoulder. The wrong hand, on the wrong shoulder. His hand was ice where Castiel’s had always been a point of unerring warmth.

“What do you mean _a good thing_?”

“He gave me what I wanted, I'll give him what he wants. Quid pro quo, Clarice.” He laughed and gave Dean’s shoulder a companionable squeeze.

“Cut the crap, you forced him to say yes. I know how you dicks like to do things.”

“Dean, I’m disappointed in you. In general, but especially about this. Castiel is broken. You know it, Sam knows it, he knows it, too. Do you really think it’s _fair_ to let him go on living with that knowledge? Come on. That’s unnecessarily cruel, even by my standards.”

“He’s not…”

“Dean, a hammer’s only as good as its ability to drive nails, and my brother hasn’t been hitting straight—in, uh...several manners of speaking—for a while now.” He turned towards the door. “He said yes to me because he knew it made sense, tactically. I’m the only one with the strength and the knowledge to beat her, and I’m the only one who’ll kill him when I’m done. Or well,” he paused to consider, “he was fifty-fifty on that. He was counting on you to figure out I'm in here and do the deed once we’ve managed to put this cat back in her bag." He shrugged. “But that’s a risk I’ll have to take. Either way, I get out, she gets collared, he gets dead. Three birds, one stone. Smart. Efficient.” Dean found himself rushing forward without realizing it, raising his fist. Lucifer put up his hand and stopped him hard, the air now turned to stone around him. He struggled to breathe.

“No one’s killing Cas,” Dean spat. “Not me, not Sam, and _definitely_ not you.”

“Dean, I know it’s great having your own little angel on a leash, ready to rip its own heart out for you, but…”

“Shut _up_ , that’s not...that isn’t how it is.”

Lucifer drew back slightly, with a puzzled squint that made Dean’s chest ache. “Isn’t it? That’s how it looks from here. I mean, seriously, Dean, I hesitate to call this an intervention but the kid’s messed up. The minute I got in here, I delivered the most pointed beatdown I could and you know what? He didn’t even lift a finger to stop me. He took it like it was his _job_. Not very satisfying for me, but I guess we can’t always get what we want. But I’ve got to say: I saw the play-by-play, and Dean, that was impressive. Not even Heaven could do that. Michael told me he used to fight every inch of the way. And now? Well.” He quirked his mouth. “Truly you’ve done the Lord’s work.”

Lucifer made another strange, elegant gesture into the frozen air, and Dean went flying, landing with a thud next to Sam. His vision swam. “Anyway, I’ve got things to do, people to smite, weaponry to gather. I’ll call you when it’s all ready to go.” Everything went dark.

****

Dean spat blood and dragged himself to a sitting position, several hours later. He sagged against the nearest shelf. He felt blood trickling from his ear. “Sam,” he said.

“Yeah?” Sam asked, from somewhere to the left and below Dean. Dean turned his head in a slow black arc of pain towards the sound.

“Rowena told you she’s the only one who can pop that thing?”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s pissed at Lucifer for killing her?”

“Pretty pissed.”

“Okay.” He pushed himself to his hands and knees, and hauled himself upright on the desk. “Let’s go find her.”

“Dean.” He heard Sam struggle to sit up.

Dean kept his hands braced on either side of him so that he wouldn’t fall over. “Remember when I said the devil was a nightmare? Well, now I’m his.” He stood up. “We’re getting him back.”

“Okay, Dean,” Sam said, exhausted. “Okay. Let's get him back.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah. I broke my 'no season 11 until the season is finished' rule again for this episode.
> 
> The hieroglyph in question can be found on page 317 of the _[Egyptian Hieroglyphic to English Dictionary](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a1QFthV9xpkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Egyptian+Hieroglyphic+to+English+Dictionary&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1nKOhtsfKAhWIOhoKHWBtAEIQ6AEIKzAB)_ by Charles Nichols. Among other things, it forms the basis of the words 'to cut up,' 'to dismember or ruin', 'protect', and 'choice'.
> 
> ETA: I'm equally convinced that Cas is stuck down in the Cage, but I wanted to explore this particular avenue.


End file.
